The Chestertons and the Golden Key

by Nancy Carpentier Brown

  “So close..!” Joan mourned. Disappointed, everyone trailed back into the house.

  But soon they were working at the play again. The puppets were nearly finished. The green wool made a splendid dragon, and Auntlet had the idea of sewing on brass buttons for eyes and some old paste jewels for scales.

  Ted and Joan helped Unclet nail together a puppet stage. Ted was frustrated that he couldn’t stand up to manage the tools properly, but Unclet had him hold pieces in place while they were nailed. They painted the stage red, and it looked quite grand. Ted turned out to be very good at painting gold scrolls on the outside of the stage, using his father’s leftover paint.

  “You’re good at painting and your brother is good at the violin,” Joan said wistfully. “I wish I were good at something.”

  “What would you like to be good at?” Ted asked.

  “Music,” she confessed. “If only we could find the key, and I could learn piano… it’s been a dream of mine for nearly forever.”

  Ted looked up and smiled. “We’re just going to find that key, Joan,” he said. “And when we do, I bet you’ll be quite brilliant at the piano!”

  Joan blushed. Ted really was a nice boy. And the way his smile lit up his whole face, she suddenly thought he could be quite handsome.

  All week long, the excitement built as the children practiced the play, found the props they needed, and memorized their cues. As they had decided, Clare would perform the part of the Queen, Joan would be the Princess, Ted would be the Prince, and Unclet would do the King, the Dragon, and whatever other parts were needed. Sewing costumes and painting scenery kept them all busy. The Chestertons stayed for dinner nearly every night to help with the play preparations.

  Everything was coming along so wonderfully, all except for the locked piano.

  On Friday night, Unclet had to go off onto the back porch to write another article for a magazine. Clare followed him.

  “May I sit with you, Unclet?” she asked, having brought along her notebook.

  “Please do,” he said, getting up to pull out a chair for her. “How is your detective story coming along?” he asked politely.

  “Terribly,” said Clare. “I just can’t work out what should come next. Somehow, I thought if I wrote beside you, or wrote with your ink…” her voice trailed off.

  “My dear,” said Unclet, “whatever I have is yours. If you think the ink helps, then please use it.” He pushed the inkwell closer to Clare’s pen and paper. “However, perhaps you should be using my paper, too.” Here he tore his sheet in half and handed it to her. “You see I am like the soldier who saw the poor beggar, and tore his cloak in half. But perhaps more is needed. Would you like to try on my glasses?”

  Clare started to giggle as she put down her pen and tried to get Unclet’s glasses to pinch onto her nose. They were quite crooked, and soon Unclet was chuckling too.

  “And if my glasses, then why not my hat? Let me find it,” he said. He grabbed his crumpled still-muddy hat, his coat, and his walking stick.

  He set the hat on her head, draped the cloak around her shoulders, and paused. Then he held out his walking stick in front of him.

  “Would you like to know the best secret I have about writing? Something no one else knows except my darling Frances?” he asked.

  A secret? Clare stared at him, holding her breath in excitement, and nodded as hard as she could.

  Gripping the walking stick in his left hand, Unclet gave a yank at the handle with his right hand, and out of the cane, he pulled a shining sword!

  “This is my sword stick,” said Unclet, “which I always carry with me, in case I should need to defend my Frances from brigands or wild beasts. But also…” he said, glancing around. “I say, is that pillow there significant?” He pointed with the sword to an old pillow sitting on an elderly stuffed chair.

  “Not really,” Clare said, wondering to herself what kind of pillow would qualify as ‘significant.’

  “Well, if it does turn out to be, please tell your mother I’ll buy her a new one,” Unclet said. “What I do is this: I start saying what I want to say aloud, while imagining myself fighting off a dangerous creature, like a flying dragon or a vicious tiger, and that gives me the courage to think up truly good ideas.”

  He began jabbing the pillow so furiously that stuffing soon was poking from tiny holes.

  “Now have a go at it, Clare,” he said, as he handed her the sword. “You try!

  Clare gingerly took the sword and approached the chair. Not sure how stabbing a pillow could help her write, she gave it a poke.

  “Harder!” said Unclet.

  Clare, startled, stabbed the armchair instead. “Oh dear,” she said, “Mother might not like this…”

  “I shall buy her a new chair too, if I must. But we must get your imagination working somehow. Now! Again!”

  Clare shrugged back the cloak to free her hands, adjusted the hat, and plunged the sword towards the pillow. She had just put the blade clean through when Auntlet came in.

  “Gilbert! What in heaven’s name—? Are you teaching this child to mutilate pillows, just as you’ve murdered all of ours?” asked Auntlet with a mischievous smile.

  Clare laughed at the idea of the Chesterton’s pillows being murdered.

  But as she did, she suddenly thought of her detective, Sister Smith. What if she were a former spy, and what if she knew three languages, and then all at once she shouted, “Wait! Let me write this down—quick!”

  Unclet swiftly dipped his pen and handed it to her. She seized his half sheet of paper, and pinched his glasses onto her nose.

  Then Unclet took the swordstick, made a huge sign of the cross in the air in front of Clare, and said, “Now, my dear, write!”

  They all seemed to hold their breath, and then Clare began writing swiftly as she could. She wrote and wrote. When she finished, she took a deep breath, blew on the paper to dry the ink, and held it up. Her heart racing, she began reading aloud:

  Unclet and Auntlet clapped and cheered. Unclet wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Es-stealio! Wonderful! Very good, Clare, very good! Frances, did you hear that? Esteelio!”

  Clare jumped up and hugged them both, then realized she had five more ideas that all needed to be written down at once. So she sat and started writing again. Behind her, she heard Unclet kissing Auntlet. Clare grinned, her hand still working the pen as fast as she could.

  Saturday dawned bright and warm. The earth smelled fresh and the ocean breeze felt marvelous. Waking up, Clare thought there would never be such a day in all her life again. She looked over at her desk, where pages and pages of her writing sat. Her story was coming along splendidly. Her dream of writing a detective story was happening at last.

  “Breakfast!” Mother called, and Clare dressed quickly in her best sailor suit, and ran downstairs. The play was to be performed that night, and there was so much still to be done.

  “Calm down, Pepper, you silly dog!” said Cece. But the dog would not calm down: the Chestertons and the Hampton boys were here to help straighten the house and get everything ready for the evening performance.

  Dusting the living room with an ostrich-feather duster, Joan ran a hand over the locked piano. If only…

  “Will, that piece sounds simply magnificent,” said Auntlet, as Will finished the last strains of “All’s Well.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Chesterton,” said Will, setting down his violin.

  “My goodness,” Auntlet said, “you can call me Auntlet, too. I think we’ve known each other long enough now.”

  “Thank you, Auntlet,” said Will, blushing, and he excused himself to go help bring chairs into the living room for the audience.

  The day flew by quickly, and everyone was excited when suddenly the supper dishes were all put away and it was time for the show. Ted and Will’s parents came over, along with their three sisters, one of whom was just a tiny baby. Auntlet was asked to hold the infant, and she enjoyed that very much.

&
nbsp; Next-door neighbors and friends from school arrived. Mr. Green, the station master, and his wife came, too. Soon the front of the house was standing-room-only, which Unclet declared was good for an opening night.

  Joan and Clare ducked behind the puppet stage with Cece and Ted. They waited while Unclet introduced the play with a short narration while Will played a simple folk tune on the violin.

  Then Unclet leaned over the stage and all at once, the king puppet was on his hand, announcing in a booming voice that in order for the kingdom to be saved, the Golden Key must be found, and the play began.

  Joan played the princess who gave wise advice to several of the princes who joined the quest, and Clare acted a very funny queen who was always losing things. Unclet played a scary dragon, who flew down from the sky and threatened to destroy the bridge to the castle with his fire.

  There was a short intermission, during which Mother served brownies to the smallest children and some of the performers, while Unclet and the boys set up the new scene.

  In this scene, a prisoner (played by Cece) had been trapped in the dragon’s castle. Only one prince remained, the prince with the broken leg, but with the help of the princess, he was about to find the hiding place of the Golden Key at last.

  Ted had the puppet on his hand ready to cross the bridge, and Joan, one hand performing the princess, rummaged in the prop box with her other hand for the key. When she found the skate key that Will had painted gold for the play, she started to hand it up to Ted.

  But suddenly, she saw the key as though for the first time, and at once she knew what it was.

  “Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed, which was not what the wise princess was supposed to say. She stood up, knocking over the mountain which had served as a backdrop.

  “What’s up?” asked Ted, which was also not what the prince was supposed to say.

  While the audience waited with bated breath, wondering if this were part of the play, Joan, the princess puppet still on her hand, hurried quickly to the piano where Auntlet was sitting with the baby.

  Barely daring to breathe, Joan slid the golden key into the small hole on the front of the piano cover, and turned it. It opened!

  “It works!” Joan cried, pushing back the lid. Trembling, she took off the princess puppet, and lowered her hands onto the keys. Sweet notes sounded clearly throughout the room.

  All the puppeteers and the stage crew began to cheer, and so then, of course, the audience did too.

  Joan spread out her arms and hugged the piano like a long lost friend. “Unclet, Will! Help me roll the piano closer!”

  When the piano had been moved to the front of the room, Joan was not sure what to do next, but then Mother came up, wiping a tear quickly from her eye.

  “Let me, Joan,” she said, and she sat down and began to play, “Ode to Spring.”

  Quickly Joan handed the princess puppet to Cece, who helped a jubilant Ted finish the play by setting the prisoner free while the song continued. Will set his music on the piano and accompanied Mother’s beautiful playing with his violin, as though they had been practicing together for weeks.

  And when the Prince had at last slain the dragon, and the townsfolk were finally safe, the puppet Princess thanked the Prince with a kiss, and the entire cast began to sing, “All’s Well that Ends Well,” while Mother and Will played together. Joan couldn’t decide if Mother were happy or sad, for she smiled and sang as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  The audience joined in singing, and, since no one wanted the music to stop, they sang it all through again. Ted hobbled over to sit beside Joan and smiled at her. She beamed back. The mystery of the Golden Key had been solved!

  “So how did the key get here? Where was it all this time?” everyone wanted to know once the music stopped and they were happy with tea and after-play refreshments.

  “Oh, let me ask the questions, just like a real detective!” Clare begged. To Unclet, she added, “It will be more research for my book.”

  Chuckling, Unclet agreed, and the questions began.

  “So the Golden Key was really the piano key, but we all thought it was a skate key,” said Clare, notebook in hand. “So my first question is for Mother. You told us the piano key was silver. But when Ted found it, it was black and rusty. Before we painted it gold.”

  “It must have become tarnished,” Mother explained. “Silver turns black when it tarnishes, especially if it’s exposed to the weather.”

  “Oh!” Clare said, and then turned to Ted. “Where did you find the key?”

  Ted thought, ruffling his hair. “I found it when Will and I were treasure-hunting in the back garden a few weeks ago. It was sort of half-sticking-out of the ground near a tree.”

  “How would it have got there?” Cece asked. “If Mother had put it in a drawer or kept it in her apron pocket?”

  “I think we know the answer to that,” said Unclet. “It turns out that our red herring was actually the true culprit!”

  He turned to Pepper a bit severely. Pepper, busy with a biscuit under Unclet’s chair, realized he was the center of attention and wagged his tail and barked. Everyone laughed, and Unclet patted Pepper on the head, and gave him another biscuit.

  Clare closed her notebook with a sigh. “The investigation will have to end there, since Pepper will never be able to tell us just how and when he found the key.”

  “In real life, a bit of mystery always remains,” Unclet agreed. “But it’s more fun that way, isn’t it?”

  Auntlet sat down at the piano and began to play “Ode to Spring.” Within a few moments, everyone had gathered around the piano to sing along.

  Unclet kept forgetting the words accidentally or on purpose, and singing, “Sewed a String,” while plunking random keys over his wife’s shoulder.

  Then Joan begged Mother to play again, and Mother insisted she was out of practice, but they all coaxed her. At last she sat down, touched a few keys, and began to play an absolutely stunning Mozart sonata. When it was done, everyone laughed and clapped and cried, and it was wonderful.

  “Mother,” Joan asked, “when you have time, would you teach me to play piano?”

  “Why of course, my darling. I’d love to,” Mother said as she hugged her and kissed her forehead. Joan knew her wish was coming true.

  It was very late when everyone finally left. After Clare said goodnight and went up to bed, she sat down at her desk to write a bit more of her story, when Joan came in.

  “Wasn’t tonight the most wonderful ever?” Joan asked, sitting on Clare’s bed.

  “The past two weeks have been the most wonderful ever,” Clare said with conviction. Two weeks ago she hadn’t been able to write a story, and she hadn’t known Mr. Chesterton as anyone other than a famous writer. But now, she not only had a story, but a new friend. She felt that Mr. Chesterton would be her friend for the rest of her life.

  Joan hummed and swung her feet on the bed, floating in happiness. “I haven’t felt this happy since Daddy died,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Clare whispered back. “Daddy would have loved it.”

  Then she laid down her pen, and the two girls talked about their father, and their mother playing the piano again, and everything else that had happened, until they remembered that they wanted to go to the station early in the morning to see the Chestertons off. So they hurried to bed, and fell asleep at last.

  “When will you come back?” Clare asked Unclet the next morning. She was holding his hand as they stood on the station platform. Auntlet was saying goodbye to Mother, while Joan and Cece hugged her and Pepper barked and barked.

  “When would you like me to return, my dear?” Unclet said gently. “Your wish is my command. You see, sometimes, I am not only Shakespeare’s ghost, but a genie in disguise.”

  Clare giggled. “Well, if I had my way, you’d live here always instead of in Beaconsfield. But perhaps maybe you could come back next summer and visit, or at Christmas when we’re on holiday from school. Could you do that
?”

  “With my genie’s powers, I can. Watch,” he said with a smile. “Frances?” he called, and Auntlet was at his side in a moment. “Frances, let’s come back this Christmas holiday, shall we?”

  And Auntlet agreed. Unclet nodded at Clare, and patted her hand. And then Mr. Green, the station master, was collecting tickets, and they were promising to write letters to each other, and the train whistled.

  And then everyone gathered up the suitcases, and the Chestertons were on the train, and everyone was shouting goodbye. As the engine slowly pulled away, they saw Unclet and Auntlet waving, and everyone waved and waved, until the train disappeared around a long curve.

  “Dear Clare, you aren’t crying, are you?” Mother asked. “Christmas will be here before you know it.”

  “Oh!” said Clare, quickly wiping her eyes. “I’ve got to finish my story before then!” And she ran home to finish writing the next chapter about Sister Smith and Mario Esteelio.

  She couldn’t wait to show it to Unclet.

  The End.

  by Nancy Carpentier Brown

  Mr. and Mrs. Chesterton were real people. G.K. Chesterton was a famous author and journalist. He was born in 1874. He wrote scores of books and lots of poems. Although he and his wife had no children, he loved children, and made a wooden theater for putting on puppet plays with his young friends.

  The family in the story is a real family, the Nicholl family, who met the Chestertons when the couple visited the town of Lyme Regis where they lived.

  The Nicholls had seven children: a son named Robert, and six daughters: Dorothy, Barbara, Agnes, Clare, Joan and Cecelia. The four older children were already out of the house when the Chestertons met the younger three. As in this story, Clare wrote the note telling Mr. Chesterton he was the reincarnation of Shakespeare and inviting him to tea.